Ioanna Grypari - Economics Research
Ioanna Grypari - Economics Research
One Tick and You're Out! The Effects of the Master Lever on Senators' Positions - joint with Olga Gorelkina
Paper (**New Version** ) - Additional Materials
One of Best-Evaluated Individual Papers at the SIOE 2016 Conference
This paper accounts for the effects of the master lever (ML), a straight-ticket voting option, on the positions of elected U.S. senators from 1961 to 2012. The ML, still present in some states, allows voters to select one party for all elections listed on a ballot by ticking only one box, as opposed to filling out each office individually. Introducing it changes the groups of voters targeted by parties and the positions of senatorial candidates. Theoretically, we analyze the effects of this shift in tradeoffs by building a model of pre-election competition. Empirically, we use a difference-in-differences estimator to account for selection into treatment, and find that the ML has led to a right-wing shift of Republican positions, and has had on average no effect on Democratic senators. We explain this asymmetric result by examining the joint distribution of partisanship and positions in our sample.
The Demand for Politicians: Campaigning and Voting in US Presidential Elections
This paper accounts for the effect of political campaigns on U.S. Presidential election outcomes from 1952 to 2012. I use two different measures of political campaigning: the positions of Presidential candidates (as perceived by the electorate) and issue emphasis. The latter refers to the fraction of a political campaign dedicated to a specific issue. Since campaigns are determined through political competition, I construct a structural model to account for this endogeneity. Noting the similarity between two campaign-setting political candidates and two price-setting oligopolists, I borrow from the applied micro literature on product demand estimation to estimate the demand for Presidential candidates in the US, as a function of their campaigns and characteristics. I construct a data-set of issue emphasis using the Nominating Convention acceptance speeches and use it in conjunction with the American National Election Studies data-set to find that issue emphasis on economic policy, political authority and corruption, and traditional values issues are all significant determinants of vote choice, and the effect of each varies by the party and position of a Presidential candidate, and the unemployment level in the economy. I also estimate a random effects version of the model using BLP (2004), to account for the variation of campaign effects by demographic and partisan group in the voting population.
Political Campaigning and Policy Implementation in the US - joint with Grigorios Siourounis
This paper empirically establishes the relationship between pre-election competition and post-election policy making, in US Presidential elections from 1952 till 2008. Specifically, we account for the effect of political campaigning, through issue emphasis, on bills proposed and passed during a presidency. First, we construct a "campaign effect" variable by isolating the fraction of post-election bill proposals that is solely due to campaign promises. We do so by exploiting the observed difference in behavior between the winning and losing party of the Presidential election. Second, we build a dynamic structural model to allow for the endogeneity of bill proposals to campaign promises and vice versa. Using data on bills from the Policy Agendas Project and survey data from the American National Election studies, as well as our constructed variables from the first part of the paper, we estimate the model. We are, thus, able to quantify the effects of political campaigning on bills passed into law, through agenda priorities. Campaign effects dissipate or persist depending on the party that controls the Congress, the term of the President and whether an issue was high on the agenda for both parties.
Microcredit and the Development of Business Networks: Evidence from Germany - joint with Anna Kochanova
This paper examines the effects of microfinance on economic and social networks formed around small businesses in Germany, from 1994 to 2014. First we show that immigrant networks are the least affected by such programs, potentially due to better intra-group lending. Using them as a control group and matching them with natives, we run a difference-in-differences estimation exploiting the 2004-2006 boost in microcredits. We find that microfinance is able to expand pre-existing networks, but the effects are smaller on the creation of new networks.
Reverse Political Coattails: The Case of the Rust Belt - joint with Olga Gorelkina
In this paper we examine reverse coattail effects in the US Presidential election of 2016. In other words, we consider the possibility that popular candidates for “down-the-ballot” offices affected the voters’ choice for President. In order to identify the effect empirically, we focus on counties with very small winning margins and also use the variation across states in terms of offering a master lever (or straight-ticket voting option) on their ballots. Theoretically we build a model of multi-office political competition to explain the mechanism behind our findings.
Networks, Productivity and Happiness: Should You Hire Your Cousin? - joint with Anna Kochanova
Exploiting an exogenous variation in networks formed around small businesses in Germany, we identify the effects of structure, and other network characteristics on the perceived productivity and life satisfaction of small business owners, using GSOEP data from 1994 to 2004.